8.13.2013 | Tuesday

Beautiful Redemption

category: Book Reviews
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Beautiful Redemptiontitle: Beautiful Redemption
author: Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl
series: Beautiful Creatures #4
published: 23 October 2012
genre(s): fantasy, gothic, romance
pages: 479
source: bought
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | BookBub | Goodreads

rating: three-half-stars | series rating: five-stars

the blurb

Is death the end . . . or only the beginning?Ethan Wate has spent most of his life longing to escape the stiflingly small Southern town of Gatlin. He never thought he would meet the girl of his dreams, Lena Duchannes, who unveiled a secretive, powerful, and cursed side of Gatlin, hidden in plain sight. And he never could have expected that he would be forced to leave behind everyone and everything he cares about. So when Ethan awakes after the chilling events of the Eighteenth Moon, he has only one goal: to find a way to return to Lena and the ones he loves.

Back in Gatlin, Lena is making her own bargains for Ethan's return, vowing to do whatever it takes -- even if that means trusting old enemies or risking the lives of the family and friends Ethan left to protect.

Worlds apart, Ethan and Lena must once again work together to rewrite their fate, in this stunning finale to the Beautiful Creatures series.


my review

This is the long-awaited conclusion to the Beautiful Creatures saga.  And, honestly, it was my least favorite of the entire series.  I had huge hopes for the book and, while I did enjoy it, I didn’t love it as much as I would have expected or liked.

The story was told from the switching POVs of Lena and Ethan, as they were apart for much of the book.  While I didn’t mind the back and forth (it was a necessary thing), I thought that the story dragged a bit during the time during which they essentially had separate lives.  Unfortunately, at times it was difficult to really understand how much time was even passing in the story.

I loved Ethan in this story, with his dedication and loyalty.  I had a hard time pinning Lena down in this book, however.  Sometimes she seemed powerful, the world’s strongest Caster.  Other times, she seemed a bit weak and “damsely.”  I came away from this series almost feeling as if her entire being was dependent upon Ethan’s presence in order to have a life and a personality.

All of that being said, I did enjoy the new twists and turns and the deep seated need to know how it would end for them kept me turning the pages!

Things to love about Beautiful Redemption

  • The ending.  I liked how it ended and I liked the underlying message of love and loyalty.
  • The mythology.  The mythology of the Caster world was pretty fascinating and we got a lot of it in this book.

Things I wanted more of…

  • Ethan and Lena together.

If you have read the other books in the series, this is a must-read to close out this wonderful series!

About Kami Garcia

Kami Garcia is the #1 New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal & international bestselling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures Novels (Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos & Beautiful Redemption). Beautiful Creatures has been published in 50 countries and translated in 39 languages. The Beautiful Creatures movie released in theaters on February 14, 2013.

Kami is also the author of Unbreakable, the first book her paranormal solo series, THE LEGION (coming October 1, 2013.

Kami grew up outside of Washington DC, wore lots of black, and spent hours writing poetry in spiral notebooks. As a girl with Southern roots, she has always been fascinated by the paranormal and believes in lots of things “normal” people don’t. She’s very superstitious and would never sleep in a room with the number “13″ on the door. When she is not writing, Kami can usually be found watching disaster movies, listening to Soundgarden, or drinking Diet Coke.

Kami has an MA in education, and taught in the Washington DC area until she moved to Los Angeles, where she was a teacher & Reading Specialist for 14 years. In addition to teaching, Kami was a professional artist and led fantasy book groups for children and teens. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, daughter, and their dogs Spike and Oz (named after characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

About Margaret Stohl

Writing has gotten me in and out of trouble since I was 15 (back then, mostly just in trouble.) For 10 years, I designed &/or wrote for lots of video games, one of which was nominated for “Most Innovative Game Design,” but I lost to a rapping onion. If you know games you get why my two bad beagles are named Zelda and Kirby.

School: I spent more years in it than a person ever should, because let’s face it, reading books is so much better than having a job. I fell in love with American literature at Amherst and Yale, earned an MA in English from Stanford, and studied creative writing under the late great poet George MacBeth at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. I taught Intro to Film as a TA at Yale and Romantic Poetry as a TA at Stanford. Don’t tell the people at Yale but sometimes I taught the section before I’d seen the movie it was about…

I live in Santa Monica, CA, with my family, most of whom were enslaved into working with me in one form or another on my first YA book for Little, Brown. I’m not kidding; when my daughters wanted to go to school I said “Why are you so selfish? Get back in there and edit,” and by said I mean yelled and maybe threw things, it’s all a haze. Now the Beautiful series has wrapped, but you can see the movie on February 13, 2013 or read my new book ICONS on May 7th. Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy.

::spread the love::

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